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I have never been a big fan of card games. My expectations for Dominion were therefore quite low, also considering all the great reviews this game had received.

Dominion was supposed to be a warm-up game. A quick 30 minutes before continuing to the highlight of the evening: Shogun. Three hours later we were still at it with heaps of Supply cards left. Either something was wrong or we were extremely slow learners. After reading the rulebook it was clear that we had made three rookie mistakes: 1) We had used all 25 Kingdom cards, 2) all the Supply cards (4p game), 3) and hadn’t figured out that the Copper cards were free. Now the three hours made sense.

Despite the misinterpretation of the rules we could all agree on one thing: this was a great game, possibly replacing Shogun as our new favourite (ratings will be given in the near future).

Like any first gaming session strategic play was more or less absent and replaced by random tactics. Actually I would say we played pretty poorly. All of us, some more than others, were competing in obtaining as many action cards as possible (or so it seemed) meanwhile neglecting to collect Treasure and Victory cards. In retrospect this was really stupid (but fun) since the amount of Victory cards will determine the winner. One of us, Svendsen, played pretty decent and won the game even though I suspect he has spent his previous evenings reading up on strategy moves on the internet (something I always refrain from doing since it is unfair to the other players).

The take-home message from this first session is obviously: read the rulebook thoroughly before playing!